Day 170: I Hate French Lit

17 fevrier 2010 (Day 170)
It is so nuts starting the week on Wednesday. It also doesn’t help that class starts at 8am and is French literature. Today my notes were filled with “I hate French Literature” doodled in available white space. I don’t like studying literature in English, and in French it is even worse. Today our teacher was (at least attempting) to talk about surrealism but he kept on going on these odd tangents and mentioned at least 50 people (but not anything that they did) which I am sure we are supposed to have memorized. I walked into class and my understanding of French was just crappy today and so it made it a lot worse. I did understand when the teacher quoted A. Breton as saying, “Literature is one of the sadest ways…” or something like that. I agree. The class made me really stressed and so I went home and had some hot cocoa to mellow out. I also read on Wikipedia about surrealism. My two hour class was summed up on that one page. It kind of made me wonder why I went to class when it was clearer online.
Luckily sociology of cultures doesn’t suck. Today we actually spent almost two hours analyzing a graph that was about the style of music listened to by French persons divided by sex, age, and their job. It was actually quite interesting. Boys have a tendency to listen to the “harder” stuff (theories to why included boys being more virile…ha ha awkward!), the youngest listening to the crappy stuff (by crappy I mean rap, hard rock, etc) and the older you get the more classical, opera, etc. There wasn’t really a difference between the different jobs, except CEO kind of people listen to classical more than the other groups. The second French lit class was a little bit better. Only because it is one and a half hours and not two. Our teacher did say some noteworthy things though. We (by we I mean he) got talking about why people write. So apparently (I don’t agree with this all but whatevs) there are four systems of signs: mundain, love (often erotic), memory, and art. To receive the truth you must go through these four systems. So since Proust wrote a totally boring book with no intrigue or hero, that let him dabble in his perverted homosexuality while reviewing his past (memory) in 7 freaking books, he reached the summit, or another universe that has truth. Yeah, fantastic, isn’t it. So, when I’m older I’ll write about wanting my mother to tuck me in and then disguise my homosexual relations by changing that character to a man in my book and then I will be a timeless author. Yeah, if you haven’t noticed, I’m not a fan of Marcel Proust. His style of writing is great, but I don’t care for what he writes about. Needless to say I have a new appreciation for Shakespeare (and I don’t like Shakespeare) and his ability to not suck.
It was humorous because I was looking up a word in a French dictionary and I saw the word “happy end” (not happy ending) and then not 30 seconds later my teacher used “happy end” in a sentence. I’m so glad the French have such a great command of the English language, lol (laugh out loud for all you old folks). I think I am pretty much going to say “happy end” all the time now.
I went on a relaxing run after all this fantastic ‘to know the truth you must be an erotic snob who thinks about the past to access pure time’ crap. I think running is pure time. Running lately has been giving me some stellar blisters on my left foot. I’m not sure why, my Brooks have never given me blisters before and I should have lots of miles left on my shoes even though I’ve had them for a while. And also I don’t want to try to get a new pair of shoes and have to lug them around all summer. Hopefully my feet and legs will hold up until July.
I decided to buy some taboulé and have it for dinner. I thought it was cous cous with tomatoes (which it is). I felt so proud of myself for getting the can open with a knife (no pop top and I don’t have a can opener) and then I found out taboulé has mint in it. A lot of mint. So basically I had a spoonful and it gave me a stomach ache. Instead I had a potato with cheese and some rosetta meat and peas. There were some new people in the kitchen who weren’t American or English but they were speaking English…it was weird.
Horror story: I saw an American eating like Kraft singles here. She was putting it in an omelet. I had this urge to slap it out of her hand. Who eats over processed cheese individually wrapped in plastic in France?!?!!? What Frenchman has the nerve to sell that stuff and call it fromage in France??!! Needless to say, I’m appalled.
I was going to go to bed early because I was tired, but I somehow started looking up day trips for next week (we have a week off of school). I ended up planning a two-day four city trip including what trains and where we can sleep. It is going to be pretty close to Nantes (a couple of hours by train from Nantes) to see some awesome castles and such. I ended up going to bed around midnight because Brad Call (my brother’s brother-in-law) was telling me about how I have to find a Tours religieuse while I am in Tours. It is this giant pastry that sort of looks like a religious building that I think is like an éclaire (besides in looks).